Thirteen Heavens

by Mark Fishman

  Mariano Alcalá Reyes and Rosalía Calderón Alcalá opening the door together, sharing arms and hands, Ignacio couldn’t tell who’d turned the knob of the door, which one of the two had drawn the door back toward them, pulling it gently out of the grasp of its frame, swinging the front door open on its hinges to let the nonlight of twilight scratch at their feet wearing well-kept polished shoes, and Mariano Alcalá, a retired shoemaker, come in come in señor Pardiñas, nuestro Pardiñas, our house is always open to you, it’s small as a shoebox—hehe!—you know it, and you know it well, but my Rosalía, a magician for a welcoming home, a marvel at the management of household affairs, right this way, Rosalía and Mariano, each indicating with an outstretched hand the small combination living room and dining room, it was a two-room house, and there was a sofa, Ignacio making his way on tired legs and a cane to the inviting cushions, burying himself in them, they were plump and deep, and the fabric worn, Mariano rubbing his hands together, and Mariano Alcalá it isn’t cold outside, but Rosalía’s going to make us a champurrado, masa de maíz, not masa harina or corn flour, dark chocolate, milk and panela—vanilla or cinnamon? she’ll make it like you want it, señor Pardiñas, and a few words from Edgar Allan Poe, Desde el tiempo de mi niñez, no he sido / como otros eran, no he visto / como otros veían, no pude sacar / mis pasiones desde una común primavera, “From childhood’s hour I have not been / As others were—I have not seen / As others saw—I could not bring / My passions from a common spring,” what do you say to that? I didn’t just fix and polish shoes and boots all these years, and Ignacio Pardiñas, you don’t have to tell me that, why do you think I’m here? you’re the one I’m talking to, don’t sing the same song, comp, and hearing these words, Mariano, not amazed or struck dumb, a smile on his lips, his face expressing happiness and satisfaction with a further proof of friendship, one more after so many years and a lot of proofs, actions and words, Mariano, Rosalía, and Ignacio, in the comfort of Mariano’s small home, a couple of rooms, but a garden at the back, Rosalía now stirring the champurrado in the kitchen, using a molinillo, a wooden whisk, rolling it between her hands, then moving it back and forth in the mixture until it was full of air and frothy, the rhythm and the spin, Ignacio and Mariano hearing her make the champurrado, Ignacio discharging releasing leaking a few words about Ernesto, Guadalupe, Coyuco, the missing son, Mariano having heard it before, knowing what Ernesto and Guadalupe were going through, a quick and delicate appreciation of others’ feelings, imagining the pain and suffering, maybe knowing it firsthand, and Mariano Alcalá, don’t let it get you down, not when people need you, and besides, nobody understands it, we live in fear of the lights going out, you get what I mean? from one minute to the next, snap! and somebody’s hit the switch, it’s not just because we’re a lot older now than we were twenty years ago, even five minutes ago, don’t look at your watch, take my word for it, Ignacio leaning forward, using his cane to balance himself, putting some of his weight on it, and Ignacio Pardiñas, what I’ve heard, there were six extrajudicially executed right from the start in four different crime scenes, including a tortured student, and another two who were shot at point-blank range, point blank, that’s less than fifteen centimeters, almost six inches away—ask Dr. Francisco Etxeberria Gabilondo, a forensic doctor from the University of the Basque Country—and on the same night in different parts of Iguala, and outside, too, at other locations, the list: at the crossroads of Juan N. Álvarez and Periférico Norte, from around nine forty-five to ten forty, that’s where they collared Coyuco, taken into custody, and I’ll bet all I’ve got, my life savings, but I haven’t got much, and a bus driver, “ya estando en la patrulla observé que los policías tenían amarrados y tirados en el piso a unos estudiantes y los estaban contando del uno al cuartro, siendo aproximadamente un total de veinte etudiantes,” “once I was already in the patrol car, I saw that the police had some students tied up and thrown on the floor and they were counting them by fours, with a total of maybe twenty students,” that’s what a woman told me, the driver’s sister, or word of mouth, unofficial, and the exit to Chilpancingo from Iguala, right in front of the Palace of Justice, lasting almost an hour, beginning about nine forty, at the same time as the attack at the intersection of Juan N. Álvarez and Periférico Norte, I know it because I’ve heard people talk, witnesses, you see it and tell somebody else and they tell you, that’s how it goes, and the exit from Iguala to Chilpancingo, just before the Palace of Justice, between ten and eleven, but no shooting, not then—it makes me sick, the police, the army, they were going crazy, they’re out of their minds, and I don’t know who was telling them to do what they were doing, but that fucking Alacrán, and his wife, that bitch! the first lady and the Queen of Iguala, you can figure they had a hand in it, and there was a kid with his T-shirt pulled up to his chest, heavy bruising, no ears, no eyes, and the skin of his face removed from his skull, did you see the picture? and an attack on a bus with the Los Avispones soccer team, a couple of other vehicles into the bargain, at the Santa Teresa crossroads, fifteen kilometers, almost ten miles from Iguala on the way to Chilpancingo, it might’ve been eleven thirty, not late but too late, police and the army, the whole bunch of them, raving mad cops, berserk, unhinged, not all there, and at eleven forty, a second attack in the same place, on the road into Iguala and Periférico, another taxi and a truck, and the municipal police, from Iguala and Cocula, maybe the state police, maybe not, but a selection, a fine blend of motherfuckers, stopping a bus—ministerial police were there, too—normalistas taking off for Colonia Pajaritos or 24 de Febrero, hiding in a house, and on a hill, and later in the night, at twelve thirty on the 27th, at the intersection of Juan N. Álvarez and Periférico Norte, a press conference, shooting and chaos and death, and finally, at Camino del Andariego, in the industrial area, probably between one and two in the morning on the 27th, a normalista tortured and executed, a little information goes a long way, Mariano listening without blinking his eyes, he’d heard some of it before, read it, a telephone call, or there were people talking about what’d happened, nothing anyone could believe even listening to the words coming out of the mouth of someone they trusted, and Mariano Alcalá, Mis días son como sombra que se va, / Y me he secado como la hierba, “My days are like an evening shadow; / I wither away like grass,” that’s Psalm 102:11, señor Pardiñas, our Ignacio, El Fuerte, mi Fuerte, and Ignacio Pardiñas, mi amigo, I know it, and Psalm 102:12, Mas tú, Jehová, permanecerás para siempre, / Y tu memoria de generación en generación, “But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever, / you are remembered throughout all generations,” and there aren’t prayers enough for the suffering I feel, not for myself because I’m not in the middle of this story, but for Ernesto, Lupe, and then there’s Coyuco, if he’s still in one piece, Ignacio sinking back into the worn cushions, letting his body collapse, Rosalía coming into the room, three hot bowls of champurrado, masa de maíz, not masa harina or corn flour, balanced on a tray, setting the tray on the low table, and Rosalía Calderón, you’re weeping over what you can do nothing about, señor Pardiñas, our Pardiñas, take a bowl, drink, it’s warm but it’ll cool you down, quench your thirst, fill your stomach like it’s the first time, because we’re being crushed, eaten by the jaguar-serpent-bird, with its human head, we need to keep our strength up to live with the jaguar-serpent-bird, the frontal war serpent, common among the Maya, traveling here all the way from Piedras Negras in Coahuila, three hundred thirty-seven miles, a thirty-six-minute flight, if it’s really a kind of bird, and Mariano Alcalá, Rosalía’s right, we’ve got to keep up our strength, did you know that in some places, when the ice melts after thousands of years, the bones of the dead appear, the dead who once lived from the Pliocene epoch, five million years ago, and into the Holocene, we’re wading through a river littered with bones, a sea of them, señor Pardiñas, and one day they’re going to be our bones and the bones of our children, and we don’t have to wait more than a thousand years, mi amigo, it’s happening now, ice or no ice, check th
e garbage dumps and the furnaces, Ignacio bringing the thick liquid made with hominy flour to his lips, taking a drink of champurrado, but his throat tightening, a reaction to Mariano’s words, the truth in them, a reality he believed from the moment he’d learned of Coyuco’s disappearance, an anxiety making it difficult to breathe, not just any bones, but those of a human being, a young man studying to be a teacher, a normalista, but it was a magic mixture prepared by Rosalía’s hands that passed his lips—she hadn’t added any unusual ingredients that didn’t belong in the champurrado, with vanilla, not cinnamon—magic and magic, irresistible champurrado, Rosalía didn’t know it, Mariano didn’t know it, Ignacio didn’t know it, swallowing it now without a clue of its potency, the atol de elote sliding down his throat, and bang! gone the winter of other countries located farther north, a wintry sentiment suddenly cleared of cold and fallen leaves and snow, a passable path of summer warmth and brightness, his feelings, his disgust, his disappointment soaring away from him, evaporating in the heat of the sun that Rosalía’s champurrado released in the east of a black stinking place he’d carried within him since breakfast, a reawakened faith and enthusiasm for mankind, amid all the horror, a little corner of brotherly love making life bearable again—a hot lunch didn’t rid him of the terror that felt like nightmare-filled dreams—but Coyuco and forty-three others, burned brittle like bacon or their bloated bodies buried in a trash heap, and Mariano Alcalá, I can read your mind, a question rising, what’d they do to deserve it? is it the god of stone and coldness, castigation, Itztlacoliuhqui-Ixquimilli, with his face and curving forehead of banded stone, in Nahuatl, the expression for punishment, tetl-cuahuitl, meaning “wood and stone,” a little justice is blind for all of us, so where are they? they couldn’t be dead, leaving their bones for future archaeologists, forensic detectives, to dig up after the ice melted, and Ignacio Pardiñas, his own voice echoing in his head, they’re dead, I’m sure of it, sure as fate, and no two ways about it—a total of more than one hundred eighty victims, that many human rights violations, young men, and minors, too—then Ignacio stood up, pushing off with the muscles in his legs, lower belly and back, his legs supporting him, he didn’t need his cane, a hand-painted wooden stick, and his ears tingled with the sensation of ants radiating heat, running up and down, down and up, from his earlobes to the top of his pinnae, insects marching deep within the rigid cartilage of the external part of his ear, a complex social colony with one or more breeding queens, wingless except for fertile adults, or it was a colony of pollinating, stinging winged insects rushing down his face, traveling to his legs, hips and feet, bees inspiring a dance straight out of Karl von Frisch’s dance language of bees, the round dance, with swift, tripping steps, Ignacio running in a circle of such small diameter that for the most part only a single chair or vase lay within it, then running about in the room, suddenly reversing direction, then turning again to his original course, between two reversals, one or two complete circles, Ignacio capturing the two pair of eyes and individual spirits of Mariano and Rosalía, seeing an example of what they’d read about in a book, that in the case of bees, there wasn’t any dancing on an empty or sparsely occupied comb, the dancer in her circling, coming at once into contact with other bees, but here the dancer was a man, their señor Pardiñas, and so, in the combination living room and dining room, Mariano and Rosalía, in an appropriate mood, having finished their bowls of champurrado, atol de elote, with vanilla, not cinnamon, following Ignacio, tripping excitedly after him, Mariano and Rosalía receiving information, holding their arms instead of antennae against his abdomen, Ignacio drawing along with him a train of two followers imitating his circlings and changes of direction, Ignacio growing weary, completing his dance, slowing down, stopping all together, Mariano and Rosalía letting go, turning away, returning to their chairs, Ignacio dropping gently to the cushions of the sofa, knowing that the round dance was a sign that there was something to be gone for and brought back, not to the hive but to their moral or emotional nature, their sense of identity, and Mariano Alcalá, bright as a button, I get it, señor Pardiñas, Pues a sus ángeles mandará cerca de ti, / Que te guarden en todos tus caminos. / En las manos te llevarán, / Para que tu pie no tropiece en piedra, “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. / On their hands they will bear you up, / lest you strike your foot against a stone”—a psalm I’ve always liked, Salmo 91:11-12—and add the ingredient of Itztlacoliuhqui-Ixquimilli, the god of stone and coldness, castigation, our punishment, tetl-cuahuitl, so what we’ve got to get and bring back to us is help from God, maybe we’ve sinned, maybe we haven’t, mi amigo, señor Pardiñas, but with our faith we must seek Him out, that’s what you’re trying to say, that’s what your dance was telling us, yet it’s difficult, almost impossible, a job that’s hard to figure on doing with any kind of enthusiasm—how fucking angry are we at what they’ve done to those young men!—so what I taste in my mouth isn’t the sweetness of the presence of God but the taste for revenge because we’re suffering, all of us, and the normalistas, they’re suffering or already dead, so having led us in the round dance of the language of bees—Ignacio interrupting him, rubbing his eyes in a discouraged gesture, and Ignacio Pardiñas, I can’t forgive a crime like that and search for God at the same time, I’m lost and I don’t know what to do, mis amigos, yes, my friends, that’s what you are and always have been, my brother and sister, too, whether you call me señor Pardiñas or Ignacio, today isn’t the day it was when I woke up, I don’t know what came over me, it must’ve been something I drank, and Rosalía Calderón, you can’t blame me because I didn’t add an ingredient that wasn’t supposed to be there—cross my heart—but what we’re feeling, the thing that’s tearing up our guts, the corpses, the smell of death, the outrage at blood that stings us like maguey thorns—I read it somewhere—it’s our world, here, Treinta y un Estados Libres y Soberanos y el Distrito Federal, every state’s got its troubles, take a look around, Rosalía looking at her husband, Rosalía looking at Ignacio, and Rosalía Calderón, mi marido, y nuestro amigo, nuestro hermano, smiling, an awkward movement of her lips, but with a sadness in her eyes, Ignacio saw it, his vision sharp, his body numbed with age, not dull but less functional, and Mariano Alcalá, if God intended us to escape the pain we run up against every day, then He’d lift us out of the way, but there’s a lesson in it, I just can’t abide the condition of being a pupil, not with the crazy municipal police, ministerial police, federal police and army when they’re doing business with criminals, and Ignacio Pardiñas, “To govern by fear … surely God can leave that to Stalin or Hitler, I believe in the virtue of courage, I don’t believe in the virtue of cowardice”—I read that in a book by Graham Greene, and Rosalía Calderón, pero en el Salmo 34:19, Muchas son las aflicciones del justo, / Pero de todas ellas le librará Jehová, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, / but the Lord delivers him out of them all,” and Ignacio Pardiñas, in Elena Poniatowska’s book, Massacre in Mexico, a government repression in October 1968, noche triste de Tlatelolco, she spent three years tape-recording interviews, “a collage of voices bearing historical witness,” and one of them, an eye witness, right there in the middle of it, Diana Salmerón de Contreras, “Now that I managed to get Julio and we were together again, I could raise my head and look around, the very first thing I noticed was all the people lying on the ground; the entire Plaza was covered with the bodies of the living and the dead, all lying side by side, the second thing I noticed was that my kid brother had been riddled with bullets,” and Mariano Alcalá, I read it, too, La noche de Tlatelolco, and the mother of a family, Matilde Rodríguez, saying, “I’d seen things like that on the Gunsmoke series on television, but I never dreamed I’d see them happening in real life,” she’d been standing behind one of the pillars supporting the Chihuahua building, her daughter’d pushed her there, then she was dragged to safety into a store, a flower shop or gift shop, but before she got there she was wounded by machine-gun fire, hit in th
e leg by a fragment of a dum-dum bullet, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, it happened then, it’s happened now in Iguala de la Independencia, and in other places, too, our many times momentous Mexico, regrets and tears, and Rosalía Calderón, my husband’s a poet, but don’t worry, he’s harmless, no threat to anyone, and the three of them, by a sudden effort, snapping out of the gloom, Mariano, Rosalía, and Ignacio laughing, and the three pairs of eyes saying, when you’ve got to laugh instead of cry, it’s a message sent directly to us from emotional Ernesto without him knowing it, “Cry! Cry! Cry!” sung by Johnny Cash, like the waterworks of Big Joe Turner, “You’re gonna cry, cry, cry and you’ll cry alone / When everyone’s forgotten and you’re left on your own / You’re gonna cry, cry, cry,” a song playing in Mariano and Rosalía’s combination living room and dining room, Ignacio rising from the sofa, putting his weight on his hand-painted wooden stick, a serpent and an eagle to keep him upright, and Ignacio Pardiñas, hey! enough already! and that goes for all of us, “The road of good things is filled with light, the road of bad things is dark,” Juan Rulfo put those words into Macario’s mouth, Macario, a simpleminded boy, a halfwit, the town idiot, Macario saying, “that’s what the priest says,” and, mis amigos, my sister, my brother, it’s that straightforward, uncomplicated, entry-level and 101—you can believe it because it’s true, and Mariano Alcalá and Rosalía Calderón, with the same voice at the same time, we believe it! and Ignacio Pardiñas, I don’t know more about my belief in God than I did when I came here, but my faith hasn’t left me, muchísimas gracias for the champurrado, the dancing and a song, Mariano and Rosalía accompanying him to the front door, watching him walk carefully to the street, Ignacio turning around, and a friendly wave goodbye from Barrancas del Cobre, Mariano and Rosalía gesturing, nodding their heads at the same time, with the same motion, sharing a single head, separated from the rest of the body by a neck, going fifty-fifty on the thing that contained the brain, mouth, and sense organs, viewed as the location of intellect, imagination, and memory, a couple living together for as long as they’d been living together knew that two heads weren’t better than one, Mariano and Rosalía keeping an eye on their friend on the downhill grade, Ignacio heading home with the help of his cane, a hardwood walking stick, Ignacio walking toward the intersection of Barrancas del Cobre and Calle 38A and the nine cement steps and a handrail on Barrancas del Cobre, seeing a sea blue-green house on the right as he descended the nine stairs, Ignacio, even-tempered, alert, but a thread of regret pulling him down, what he couldn’t do because of his age, and his helplessness in the face of authority, the police, the army, the world itself, the sun longtime gone, Ignacio opening the front door to his house, his fan turning, whispering, not whirring but oscillating, a room with no lights on, silence washing over him, no sound, no voices, inner and outer wordlessness, switching on a lamp to light his way, half a dozen paces and he was standing in the kitchen, turning on an overhead light, Ignacio smelling the garbage that’d started to stink, and the question of pursuing God with a taste in his mouth for revenge, possible or impossible? Ignacio knowing no more now than he’d known before, and with that letdown, no sense of humor about anything, Ignacio hearing crickets, and Ignacio Pardiñas, they might be real, they might not, but I hear them, crying for the souls suffering in purgatory, where’s the place for God in all this, I’ve done one right thing, encouraging Ernesto, buoying him up, Ignacio switching off the overhead light, parting the worn-out curtain over the window in the back door, the air in the kitchen stale, heavy with the remaining heat of the day, the glow of the moon making an effort to break through the curtain of clouds, Ignacio looking for God in the alley behind the house, letting his fingers play with the edge of fabric, then a glance at the bag of garbage that’d slid down but hadn’t spilled, if Ignacio could see himself in a mirror, the scarlet iridescence still in his eyes, imperfections that were always there, particles representing some kind of electromagnetic radiation, he was alive and not everybody could say the same thing, and Ignacio Pardiñas, not forty-three normalistas, and Coyuco, that’s for sure, it might be a drop in the bucket, but it’s a drop that weighs a lot, bluish-gray, soft, ductile metal, the chemical element of atomic number 82, sending out waves, hablemos claro, let’s be clear, our world isn’t the same as it was, a hefty rock thrown into the middle of our unlucky lives, and ripples of pain, like we need more of them, fucking ripples, what the fuck!—this garbage bag reeks, out it goes, Ignacio bending over, taking hold of the bag, moving it away from the door in order to open it, at once a gust wind blowing into the kitchen, brushing against his face, drying his tears, and Ignacio Pardiñas, Proverbs 3:1-4, Hijo mío, no te olvides de mi ley, / Y tu corazón guarde mis mandamientos; / Porque largura de días y años de vida / Y paz te aumentarán. / Nunca se aparten de ti la misericordia y la verdad; / Átalas a tu cuello, / Escríbelas en la tabla de tu corazón; / Y hallarás gracia y buena opinión / Ante los ojo de Dios y de los hombres, “My son, do not forget my teaching, / but let your heart keep my commandments, / for length of days and years of life / and peace they will add for you. / Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; / bind them round your neck; / write them on the tablet of your heart. / So you will find favor and good success / in the sight of God and man,” Ignacio putting the bag in a trash container, and Ignacio Pardiñas, so let’s take a good look at it all, life here on earth, and in the sky—where’d I leave my stick? but he didn’t turn around to look for his hand-painted cane that was leaning against the kitchen countertop, faith in the knowledge it was where he’d left it, Ignacio’s eyes drawn elsewhere, narrowing them to focus as he tilted his head back, the turning sky making him dizzy, and Ignacio Pardiñas, balance balance, mi amigo, then he looked at the curtain of clouds, his head rolling with them, traveling traveling, listing farther backwards, and Ignacio Pardiñas, it may rain, a heavy black cloud passing over his head, his face open to the gaze of the moon, and Ignacio Pardiñas, and it may not.